Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “US sues Apple over iPhone monopoly, explained”.
The doj is suing Apple, the Department of Justice joined by 15 states and the District of Columbia sued Apple in the US District Court for the District of New Jersey for violating section two, the Sherman Antitrust Act. The doj is going after Apple because it thinks Apple’s created this Monopoly in the smartphone market, and it’s got a couple of different examples of why it thinks it’s done, that it doesn’t like the fact that when you have a smartwatch that isn’t an Apple Watch, The Experience really sucks on an iPhone. It doesn’t like the fact that you can’t use super apps like WeChat or caca, talk very well on an iPhone. It doesn’t like the fact that you can’t do Cloud streaming or like cloud gaming on an iPhone. It doesn’t like the fact that you can’t use any other digital Wallets on the iPhone very well, except for the Apple wallet, which means you have to give all your information to Apple, even if you don’t really want to, and they do not like the green bubbles. Specifically referencing this moment at code 2022, I can’t send my mom certain videos or she can’t send me certain videos, and so we leave your mom on iPhone. This case is going to take a while to actually try in the courts and they compared it a lot to the Microsoft case back in the 90s back at the time, Internet Explorer was kind of the dominant browser on the web.
If you were using Windows machine, you pretty much were stuck using Internet Explorer and they did a lot of anti-competitive stuff to make sure you were stuck using Internet Explorer, including trying to kill Netscape. The doj feels that Apple’s doing the same thing with a lot of new app developers and a lot of new applications and a lot of new technology Apple has engaged in many of the same tactics that Microsoft used. How Apple’s anti-competitive conduct discourages developers from offering new and Innovative applications and makes it more difficult for consumers to switch to other smartphones? When Microsoft lost its case, that meant it became a lot easier to develop new applications and develop new protocols and just create new technology to work on computers and to the point that, even in this press briefing, they alluded to the fact that Apple actually became much More successful because of Microsoft’s case approximately 25 years ago, the Department of Justice State Attorneys General announced the case against a different platform. Monopolist Apple itself was a significant beneficiary of that case, and the remedy paved the way for Apple to launch iTunes, iPod and eventually, the iPhone one of the big questions that came out of this press briefing was. Does this mean that Apple’s not going to actually be able to check and see if bad apps are coming on the App Store, because that’s a big reason why they maintain the App Store? They say it makes it more private and more secure and Garland, and the rest of the doj made it very, very clear that they’re not going after that part of the app store they’re going specifically after the stuff that they call exclusionary, conduct, basically the stuff, where Apple makes it as anti-competitive as possible. That means they’re going after the App Store fees, not the App Store security for most of the past 15 years.
Apple has collected a tax in the form of a 30 % Commission on the price of any app downloaded from the App Store, as well as on inapp purchases. Apple is able to command these fees from companies of all sizes. If it’s found that Apple did actually create a monopoly, then it’s going to have to open things up.
That could mean less fees that you have to pay as a developer. That could mean a lot more cool apps that have been really restricted on Apple devices when all of our friends in the rest of the world have been using them just fine on their Android ones. It could also mean cheaper iPhones and it could even mean the end of the green bubble we reached out to Apple to get their take on being sued for being a monopoly, and this is what they had to say at Apple.
We innovate every day to make technology people love. This lawsuit threatens who we are, and the principles that set Apple products part in fiercely competitive markets. If successful, it would hinder our ability to create the kind of Technology people expect from Apple where Hardware, software and services intersect. We believe this lawsuit is wrong on the facts and the law, and we will vigorously defend against it. This is what Apple has said: every single time, they’re talking about anti-competitive stuff. We have vertical integration, so everything works, seamlessly and that’s true Apple does have one of the most seamless experiences you can get on a phone or really any kind of Gadget, but that comes at a cost and the doj thinks that cost is just too high.
They just dropped the suit today, and it’s going to take a little while for that to actually get into the court system and for the trial to actually happen. We’Re not looking at a couple of days we’re looking at months, probably even years before this thing is resolved, we’re going to be covering this heavily on the site. We’Ve already got a ton of stories that are being queued up as we speak so stay tuned. This is going to be a wild one. .